About: Statistical potential
In protein structure prediction, statistical potentials or knowledge-based potentials are scoring functions derived from an analysis of known protein structures in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). The original method to obtain such potentials is the quasi-chemical approximation, due to Miyazawa and Jernigan. It was later followed by the potential of mean force (statistical PMF ), developed by Sippl. Although the obtained scores are often considered as approximations of the free energy—thus referred to as pseudo-energies—this physical interpretation is incorrect. Nonetheless, they are applied with success in many cases, because they frequently correlate with actual Gibbs free energy differences.
